America's Employee Recognition Expert's Blog

Posts tagged: Louis Efron

I’m always impressed by how well my friend Louis Efron captures the reality of our current generational employee challenges. Leading with a focus on Corporate Purpose, Louis consistently captures the keys to business success and growth defining simple, logical and practical ways of engaging today’s diverse workforce for maximum job satisfaction, value and profit.

His latest Forbes article talks about the best ways to capture the interest and harness the value of today’s Gen Y and the upcoming Gen Z employees. This group is estimated to make up 40% of your workforce by 2020, so this is not an insignificant issue. Check out the article and let me know if you have any questions or would like to discuss ways to integrate your recognition, employee engagement and performance management strategies around a goal of better engaging your growing team of Millennials.

To learn more about Awards, Rewards and the best ways to use them to optimize our investments in your people visit http://www.SchaeferRecogntionGroup.com or email me personally at john@SchaeferRecognitionGroup.com.

I just read this new article by Louis Efron (www.LouisEfron.com) in Forbes and wanted to share it with you all. It really hits right to the core of what our lives are all about and whether we think about it or not, it is a big part of how happy and fulfilled we will be.

The constant corporate buzz and push for work-life balance is well intentioned, but the concept no longer exists. In the olden days – before smart phones, email, text and voicemail – it was possible to draw a line between work and personal time. You could leave an office at 5PM on Friday and not physically or mentally return to work until Monday at 8AM.
I work a lot because I love what I do. But because I love what I do, I don’t consider it work. This is both good and bad. It is good because I am living my purpose in life. It is bad because I sometimes don’t know when to shift focus elsewhere.
In today’s world, your conversation needs to focus simply on life balance. That is, how you balance and integrate everything you need and want to do each day, week, month and year. This includes making a living, time with your family, friends plus time for you and time for anything else you want to accomplish. Even the traditional concept of retirement is different. There is no escaping our connected world.
The whole idea of balance in life can appear elusive or even unimportant. When it comes to equilibrium, a number of studies discovered poor physical balance is significantly linked to an increased risk of sports injuries. Not surprisingly, the same applies to your personal life balance and health risk. Study after study confirms poor life balance is directly related to both physical and mental sickness and unhappiness.

Reminders To Recalibrate Life Balance
A recent New York Daily News interview with seventy-two-year-old X-Men actor Patrick Stewart drove the importance of life balance home for me yet again. Like so many people in today’s busy world, Stewart, revealed during his third marriage that he regretted focusing on his career at the expense of his family. This is not uncommon. Many people feel the same way late in life. I have worked with countless executives who lament on similar regrets approaching retirement.
Of course there are days when I let my career pursuit steal more focus than it should from my family and other important and enjoyable activities in my life. Stories like Stewart’s remind me what I need to do next. You won’t have to look hard to find other examples which will relate to your situation in life.
Signs Your Life Balance Is Off
When your life lacks balance, it is painfully obvious from the outside looking in. Sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees when in a rut.
Luckily, self-diagnosing your life balance is easy. Just pause to take inventory of what is going right and wrong in your life.
In this short pause, identify if you are experiencing any of the following challenges:
• Frequently tired or sick
• Difficulty sleeping or waking
• Hearing frequent complaints or jokes about the attention family and friends receive from you
• Feeling guilty about time allocation
• Regularly distracted from your current task
• Making simple mistakes
• Generally unhappy with your life
Many of the circumstances on this list can also result from depression. However, the question still remains as to the root of the problem. Depression can be and frequently is brought on by poor life balance.
Six Questions About Life Balance
Access to effective tools is helpful in all human endeavors, including achieving life balance. When my life is out-of-sync with the balance, success and happiness I desire I ask myself the below six questions to recalibrate. If I can’t answer, “yes” to all six, I investigate why. Then I work towards a solution to solve that issue.
1. Does my life balance contribute to the career and personal success I desire?
2. Does my life balance give me more energy in my day?
3. Do I sleep well and wake up refreshed?
4. Do important people in my life feel they get the attention they deserve from me?
5. Am I able to fully focus on a task at hand?
6. Does my life balance make me happy?
How many of the six questions did you answer yes to?
At the end of the day, life balance is about a commitment to more success and happiness. As the self-help guru Tony Robbins says, “Where focus goes, energy flows.” Commit to your six yeses now. Start realizing your true potential in life. You will be amazed at the positive life transformation which will follow.
For more information on Life Balance and how it impacts Recognition, Employee Engagement and Performance Management visit http://www.SchaeferRecognitionGroup.com

Louis Efron has written a very timely, new article for his Forbes magazine column that it well worth your consideration, if you’re an HR executive. The changing landscape of HR has come a long way, but perhaps not yet far enough. Louis shares five keys to relevance in HR in today’s economy. It boils down to helping to define and harness corporate purpose, align with employee purpose, then measure key behaviors, skills and goals to prove ROI (Return on Investment) and ROE (Return on Engagement).

Employee Engagement is the key to everything productive in any sized company, no matter what you do, where you are or the demographic make up of your team. By first focusing on defining your corporate purpose, your organization is poised for success. By next aligning with employee who have complementary purpose, you will improve recruting effectiveness, reduce turnover costs and build the potential of a highly engaged team. Then, but identifying, tracking, measuring and reporting on the behaviors that support your purpose, mission, values, goals and objectives, your company is able to maximize ROI and ROE.

Sounds easy, but it requires a strategic approach and a comprehensive, all inclusive program. Together, Louis and I are working with clients to help them on the front end to define their purpose, plans and goals and educate their team. Then on the back end we work to coordinate all of the ways they touch employees with a single employee engagement, recognition and performance management strategy that saves money, improves results and proves both ROI and ROE.

Check out the article – http://onforb.es/1uWWibj, then feel free to contact Louis or I for more information on how may be able to help you optimize yo ur most important asset – people!

I met Louis Efron, and he seemed like a pretty low-key guy to me. After reading his latest Forbes article, however – http://onforb.es/1hvrmqq, I’m beginning to see his inner tough-love guy!

Most of the time, when you read about employee engagement, it’s all about what the company can do, how management should change, the training you must provide to your supervisors, new tools, techniques, software and communication skills. But what responsibility does the employee themselves have? Or better stated … if you are a disengaged employee, what options do you have and what can you personally do about it? Should you just wait for your leadership to hire Louis Efron, Larry Myler, Bob Kelleher or some other engagement guru to make it all better or is some of the solution up to you?

Louis shares how he took a personal flyer to follow his dream after a 20+ year career in corporate America. Now I’m not sure Louis was Actively Disengaged, but he did get to the point where he made a tough decision to venture out of his comfort zone and follow a personal dream. “…yea, that’s okay for some people, but I don’t have the guts to be an entrepreneur or run a charity or start a church or take the big pay cut to go work as a fry cook in a local diner”, you may be thinking. You just might reconsider when you read the stories of people who did, do some Goggling and see what you’re missing!

We have some friends who did just that. She was a school teacher and he worked as a mid-level manager in a high tech firm here in Phoenix. After they had their second child, this couple made the crazy decision to move to Oregon and buy a farm. Seriously; a real “…if you build it, they will come” farm, with crops and tractors and planting and harvesting and all of the stuff that most of us could only imagine. Well, it wasn’t easy, but after a couple of years, they were not only making it financially (not getting rich, but not starving) and raising their kids in a small community with great family values, low overhead, low crime rate and real salt-of-the-earth neighbors and friends.

Sure, your employer has a fiduciary responsibility to the owners of the company to make it possible for you as an employee to be as happy, efficient, productive and profitable as possible, but the rest is up to you. If you’re not the “dream follower” type, then your other options is to become part of the solution. Volunteer to help spearhead Peer Review Groups, lead Productivity Circle, offer suggestions, be a breath of fresh air to those around you, or simply stay positive and engaged. It’s your choice and you can do more to help your company succeed than you probably think. Just don’t be a downer!

But, if you’ve got the cojones to venture out after the life and career your always wanted, go for it! You might fall on your face, but you also might the joy, rewards and satisfaction that is reserved for those who set their own course. If you do the work, take the risks and get engaged in your own venture, you just might be one of the new success stories that Louis Efron is talking about. My advice … go for it!!